Hi,
Does anyone know when the alternator is supposed start charging the house battery?
The battery is down to SOC 50% on the BMS.
And I do not see the dc Home Screen app showing that the alternator is charging.
Been driving it for about 45 minutes and yet to see the battery soc % go up.
An engine alternator will start charging any battery connected to it as soon as it starts up. Granted it could be a small charge at first depending on the number of batteries it is charging.
I'm not sure how it is done with trailers but in a motor home there is a relay that kicks in when you start the engine. This relay, which may be on the firewall, connects the house battery to the engine battery's charging system. If this relay fails, which mine did, you will never charge your house battery while the engine is running.
Very easy to diagnose with a voltmeter. Start the engine and measure across the engine's battery. The voltage should be somewhere between 13 - 14.5 volts. If it measures mid 12s your alternator is not charging at all. If the voltage measures good, go to the house battery and measure across it. The voltage reading should be somewhat close to what the engine battery is reading.
I have attached a troubleshooting guide that may shed light on the thing.
If this is a trailer, there probably is something under the hood that performs the same function. When I had a camper I had to install the relay for this circuit. It could also be a battery isolation thing that is a largte heatsink with electronics in it. Had one of those for awhile.
__________________
Jim
Retired electronic technician (45 years in the field)
2017 Greyhawk 29W (solar & many other mods)
wife (maybe I should have given her top billing)
The 48v alternator will not charge the house battery at idle. It needs to be around 1500-2000 rpm to start charging, it has a variable output that shows charging amps on the screen and Vega Mira app. It will charge up the battery quick at freeway speeds. If your not charging, you have a parameter not correct, need to reset your battery, or have a open wire in the alternator circuit. I believe someone else found an open alternator wire and posted on this forum about it.
I’m going over my settings. Whats ur settings? Would like to see if mine’s are set the same.
I just took delivery of mine’s from the dealership and found out about these issues. Smh
I’m going over my settings. Whats ur settings? Would like to see if mine’s are set the same.
I just took delivery of mine’s from the dealership and found out about these issues. Smh
What color does your regulator blink?
Mine blinks green with a long pause in between, indicating that it is at idle.
In the jayco terrain manual it says it should be orange and if its green it has loss comm with the BMS.
Is there a way to re establish comm with the BMS?
The 48v alternator will not charge the house battery at idle. It needs to be around 1500-2000 rpm to start charging, it has a variable output that shows charging amps on the screen and Vega Mira app. It will charge up the battery quick at freeway speeds. If your not charging, you have a parameter not correct, need to reset your battery, or have a open wire in the alternator circuit. I believe someone else found an open alternator wire and posted on this forum about it.
If I can find that thread, that's probably the same I'm experiencing with my unit. My APS-500 indicates it's not getting power from the alternator, and I found a blown fuse and keep getting blown. So I need to trace and do some trouble shooting.
Mine was wired wrong. Guessing it happened to a lot of us as it seems a lot of us are having the same problems.
They wired the main panels to the charge controller that is for the external outlet for extra solar panels. The main panels need to be wired to the inverter. Once the tech figured this out my alternator and solar started keeping it charged up all the time. When driving daily No shore power needed with house power on 24/7.
Hi,
Does anyone know when the alternator is supposed start charging the house battery?
The battery is down to SOC 50% on the BMS.
And I do not see the dc Home Screen app showing that the alternator is charging.
Been driving it for about 45 minutes and yet to see the battery soc % go up.
This is what I've noticed on my Terrain. When idling, the battery shows it's charging (though I doubt that it's really charging much if any). The manual states that a full charge state happens around 1500 RPM or higher. Checking the Firefly display lets me know that it is actually charging. Mine was at 90% today and driving around town, it charged back up to 100% in little to no time at all. If you have access to the Mira app it will also let you see in real time the charge rate go up on your battery.
I decided to purchase the Mid-City Engineering high idle/remote start kit which arrived on Tuesday. It looks like a very well made unit and appears quite easy to install. Given that with normal consumption, the solar panels do not appear to provide enough power to offset a day's use, having this while boon-docking is going to be a necessity. I may also invest in the Renogy solar panel fold out pack.
I’m having the same no alternator charge issue also my firefly screen shows no battery stats.Battery charged up last night on 30 amp shore power.Anyone know why firefly screen shows no battery stats it works for everything else.
The 0% SOC and unable to charge via the secondary alternator can be recovered, at least temporarily by following the battery reset and restart procedure (posted many times in this forum and also in the Renogy battery manual provided). The problem with only doing this is that you do not solve the underlying problem.
To solve the real problem, the first thing you need to do is determine whether your FireFly has been sent an error code over the CAN bus line and what that error is. Normally you will see something like "CAN 51" which is the catch-all error code that gets sent to the Firefly by the battery system to tell it to disable charging. This also causes the SOC to read 0%. The next thing to do if you do see the error code is check on your Samkoon (screen in the hatch above the seats). See if their is a red indicator with an error. Common ones that I have seen are "over voltage", "under voltage" and temperature related. If it is very cold where you are it is likely that your battery got to cold to take a charge (below 10c). The solution here is plug into shore power (triggers the battery warner built in) and wait a day for the the battery to warm up and begin charging. Another solution is to put a space heater in the cargo area plugged in externally to keep the battery warm. If you are not seeing a temperature related error, the next common one that I have seen is "overvoltage" on the Samkoon. This can be caused by having cells imbalanced (greater than 10mV difference from high to low on the Samkoon). You should see something like a high of 3352mv and low of 3349mv. If that spread is to large, one cell will trigger and overvoltage error before the battery reaches a full charge. This can easily be fixed by adjusting setting #9 in the inverter to below 54.0v to begin with, doing a battery reset/restart and plugging into shorepower. If you are in a sunny area a good way to fix this is by shutting everything off except one light, leaving the 12v house switch turned on, and parking in full sun. The battery will slowly be discharged at night, and recharged during the day by small amounts, balancing the battery. Once balanced, change setting #9 to 54.8v, fully charge until the SOC on the Samkoon reaches 100% and then turn down setting #9 to 54.4v or 54.0v. Do one more battery reset/retart and you should be good on the Firefly and with alternator charging. If none of this works for you, there have been cases of the AS-500 alternator regulator/charge controler going bad and that would be the next thing to check out.
Linear Mode
